“I know,” sighed Margaret. “And wasn’t it just grand! But now,” she sighed, “now, you’ll have to tell father.”

“Yes, I will—right away.”

Marjory did tell. They had not been in the house a minute before she told of their loss.

“Where’s Johnny Thompson?” their father asked.

“We—we don’t know.”

“Don’t know?”

“We haven’t seen him for two hours.”

“Well, that settles it. I might have known when I hired an adventurer to look after my thoroughbreds and guard my children that I’d be sorry. But he was a splendid man with the horses; seemed to think of ’em as his own; and as for boxing, I never saw a fellow like him.”

“Yes, and Daddy, we liked him,” chimed in Marjory. “We liked him a lot.”

“Well,” the father said thoughtfully, “guess I ought to put a man on his trail and bring him back. Probably went off with the circus. But I won’t. He’s been a soldier, and a good one, I’m told. That excuses a lot. And then if you go dangling a few thousand dollars on a bit of gold chain, what can you expect? Better go get your supper and then run on to bed.”

That night, before they crept into their twin beds, Marjory and Margaret talked long and earnestly over something very important.

“Yes,” said Marjory at last, “we’ll find some real circus clothes somewhere. Then we’ll have Prince and Blackie saddled and bridled. Then we’ll ride off to find that old circus and bring Johnny Thompson back. We can’t get along without him; besides, he didn’t take it. I just know he didn’t.”

“And if he did, he didn’t mean to,” supplemented Margaret.

A moment later they were both sound asleep.

As Johnny Thompson bumped along in his rail gondola, with the click-click of the wheels keeping time to the distant pant of the engine, he dreamed a madly fantastic dream. In it he felt the nerve-benumbing shudder which comes with the shock of a train wreck. He felt himself lifted high in air to fall among rolls of canvas and piles of tent poles, heard the crash of breaking timbers, 

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